NORFOLK — The movie Ricky Rahne watched on his weekend flight home from Bloomington, Indiana, didn’t exactly get five stars. It was more like one thumb up — if that.
And he certainly doesn’t want to see a sequel.
As Old Dominion made its way home after Saturday’s season-opening 27-14 loss at No. 20 Indiana, Rahne, the Monarchs’ sixth-year coach, began digesting what went wrong.
ODU (0-1) took a quick 7-0 lead before a litany of blunders and missteps took their toll.
The Monarchs, despite handily beating the game’s 25-point spread, had not put forth the kind of complete effort their coach had seen during fall camp.
“I’m on the plane and getting upset watching the tape,” Rahne said Monday at his weekly news conference. “It was more about the consistency. We didn’t take the practice very well to the game, and that’s something that, obviously, I’m directly responsible for. So that was where I was personally frustrated on that end.”
ODU trailed 17-7 at halftime before allowing 10 unanswered points in the third quarter.
A pair of first-half interceptions thrown by sophomore quarterback Colton Joseph — none of Joseph’s three picks in the game was entirely his fault, Rahne said — had already led to 10 points and put the Hoosiers (1-0) in the driver’s seat.
Indiana put up 502 total yards to the Monarchs’ 314. ODU’s defense, often positioned on its heels, held its own in the red zone, twice keeping a team that reached last season’s College Football Playoff scoreless in five trips.
The fix moving forward, the Monarchs believe, is simple.
“First, we’ve got to prioritize the mistakes we made and really learn off of those,” senior defensive end Kris Trinidad said. “But I feel like if everybody does their 1/11th, we can definitely play with anybody in the country.”
North Carolina Central, which has split games with Southern University of Louisiana and New Hampshire, visits S.B. Ballard Stadium on Saturday for a game that ODU is taking just as seriously as it did the opener.
“We’ve got to treat them like they’re a Big Ten team,” senior offensive tackle Zach Barlev said. “We’ve got to treat this FCS team like a Big Ten team.”
The Eagles (1-1), Rahne pointed out, have gone 27-8 and 12-3 in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference over their previous three seasons. They return starters all over the field, including at quarterback, receiver, tight end and the offensive line.
In a demonstration of college football’s pecking order, ODU received $1.4 million to play at Indiana. N.C. Central will receive a yet-disclosed six-figure total to visit Norfolk.
Rahne cited a slew of upsets around the nation over the weekend as evidence that the Monarchs need to be prepared for anything.
“The guarantee part of it is pretty much gone at this point,” Rahne said. “I mean, there’s battles across the board.”
For a while, Indiana had one on its hands. Rahne, whose team faces an especially tough early schedule, is hoping for more than that, no matter the opponent.
“There’s positives knowing that if we execute the right way, that we can hang with anybody,” he said. “But there’s no moral victories. I mean, everyone wanted to and expected to win that game.”
David Hall, david.hall@pilotonline.com.
